Ship of Darkness

  A. E. van Vogt

  Taken from the short story collection ‘The Far Out Worlds of A E Van Vogt’

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  v0.9 by the N.E.R.D’s. This is a pre-proof release. Scanned, page numbers removed, paragraphs joined, formatted and common OCR errors have been largely removed. Full spell check and read-through still required.

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  It was different, D’Ormand realized, deciding on Earth to do something. And actually doing it in intergalactic space. For six months, he had headed out from the solar system, away from the gigantic spiraled wheel that was the main galaxy. And now the moment had come to take his plunge into time.

  A little shakily D’Ormand set the dials of the time machine for 3,000,000 a.d. And then, his hand on the activator, he hesitated. According to Hollay, the rigid laws that controlled the time flow on planets would be lax and easy to escape from, here in this sunless darkness. First of all, Hollay had said, accelerate the ship to maximum velocity, and so put the ultimate possible strain on the fabric of space. Then act.

  Now! D’Ormand thought, sweating. And pushed the plunger hard. There was a sickening jar, a steely screeching of wrenched metal. And then again the steady feel of flight.

  ‘D’Ormand’s vision was swimming. But he was aware, as he shook the dizziness out of his head, that he would be able to see again in a moment. He smiled with the grim tenseness of a man who has ricked his life successfully.

  Sight came abruptly. Anxious. D’Ormand bent toward the time machine control board. And then drew back, shocked. It wasn’t there.

  He looked around, incredulous. But his was no big ship, requiring detailed scrutiny. It was one room with an engine, a bunk, fuel tanks and a galley. Nothing could be hidden in it. The time machine wasn’t there.

  That was the metal tearing sound he had heard, the machine wrenching itself off into time, leaving the ship behind. He had failed. He was still groaning inwardly when a movement caught the corner of his eyes. He turned with a painful jerk of his body. High in the viewing plate he saw the dark ship.

  One look; and D’Ormand knew that, whatever the reason for the time machine’s departure, it had not failed.

  The ship was close to him. So close that at first he thought it was the nearness which made it visible. And then, the eerie reality of its lightless state penetrated. He stared, and the first fascination roared into his mind, the realization that this must be a craft of the year 3,000,000 a.d.

  Fascination faded before a thrill of doubt that gathered into a blank dismay. Abruptly, it wasn’t only the fact that he could see it that was unnatural. There was the ship itself.

  Out of some nightmare that ship might have sailed. At least two miles long, half a mile wide, a foot thick, it was a craft fit only for such a darksome sea as space itself. It was a platform floating in the night of interstellar emptiness.

  And on the broad deck, men and women stood. Naked they were, and nothing at all, no barrier however flimsy, pro tected their bodies from the cold of space. They couldn’t be breathing in that airless void. Yet they lived. .

  They lived and they stood on that broad dark deck. And they looked up at him, and beckoned. And called. The strangest call it was that had ever come to a mortal man. It was not a thought, but something deeper, stronger, more moving. It was like a sudden body-realization of thirst or hunger. It grew like a craving for drugs.

  He must land his spaceship on the platform. He must come down and he one of them. He must… primitive, unrestrained, terrible desire…

  With a rush, the spaceship glided to a landing. Immediately, with the same terrible urge, his desire was for sleep.

  D’Ormand had time for one desperate thought of his own. Got to fight, came that flash of inner warning. Got to leave, leave. At once. Sleep came in the middle of horrendous fear.

  Silence! He was lying with eyes closed in a world that was as still as -

  D’Ormand couldn’t find a mental comparison. There wasn’t any. There wasn’t anything in his entire existence that could match the intense stillness, the utter absence of sound that pressed against him like - Once again there was no comparison. There was only the silence.

  Strange, he thought; and the first remote impulse came to open his eyes. The impulse faded; and there remained in his mind the measured conviction that surely he, who had spent so many ^months alone in a spaceboat, must know the full meaning of silence.

  Except that in the past there had been the faint sshhh sshhh of the inhalation and exhaltation of his breathing, the occasional sucking sound of his lips on a tube of nourishing soup, and the movements of his body. This was - what?

  His brain wouldn’t make a definition. D’Ormand opened his eyes. At first, sight offered the barest variation of impression. He was lying partly on his side, partly on his back. Nearby, blotting out the stars, was a torpedo-shaped blob about thirty feet long and twelve feet high. Aside from that there wasn’t anything in his line of vision but stars and the darkness of space.

  Normal enough. He had no fear. His mind and its life seemed far away. Memory was an even remoter adjunct. But after a moment there trickled to the surface of his will the desire to place his physical position relative to his surroundings. ‘

  There had been, he remembered weightily, a dark ship. Then sleep. Now stars and interstellar night. He must still be sitting in the control chair gazing at the viewing plate and the vista of heavens it revealed.

  But - D’Ormand frowned mentally - he wasn’t sitting. He was lying on his back, staring up, up… at a -sky full of stars and at a blob of something that looked like another spaceboat.

  With an owl-like detachment, his brain argued against that impression. Because his was the only Earth spaceship in that part of the universe. There couldn’t be a second ship. Just like that D’Ormand was on his feet. He had no consciousness of getting up; One instant he was sprawling on his back. Now he was standing, swaying…

  He was standing on a broad deck beside his spaceboat. The deck, everything, was plainly visible in a dim fashion for its entire length and width. And all around him, near and far, were naked men and women standing, sitting, lying down, paying him not the slightest heed.

  He was clawing - clawing with senseless fingers at the air lock of the spaceboat, striving to tear it open by strength alone.

  After a mindless period of time, his spaceman’s training began to dictate those automatic, desperate movements of his body. He grew aware that he was studying the lock mechanism anxiously, tugging at it gingerly, testingly. Then he was stepping back, surveying the small ship as a whole.

  Out of some unplumbed reserve of calm there came to D’Ormand at last the will and the ability to walk quietly around the spaceboat and peer in at the portholes. The inside was a dim well of familiar mechanisms and metal shapes, the sight of which brought a spasm of returning frenzy, easier to fight this time.

  He stood finally very still, holding his mind clear of extraneous ideas, thinking one simple, straightforward thought, a thought so big that all his brain was needed to hold it, to balance it, and comprehend the immense reality of it.

  And it grew harder, not easier, to grasp that he was on the platform ship. His brain started to twist, to dart off in streaks of doubt and fear and disbelief. But always it came back. It had to. There was no sane elsewhere for it to go. And there was nothing, utterly nothing to do but wait here until his captors showed by action what further fate they intended for him.

  He sat down. And waited.

  An hour at least went by, an hour like no other in the history of his world: a man from 2975 a.d. watching a scene on a space liner of thirty thousand centuries later.

  The only thing was, and it took the whole hour for the fact to sink in, there wasn’t anything to watch except the incredible basic scene itself. Nobody seemed to be remotely aware that he was on the ship. Occasionally in the dimness a man strolled by, a figure that moved against the low-hung stars, plainly visible as was the whole dark deck and its cargo of superhuman beings.

  But no one came to satisfy his growing lust, his need for information. With a tingling shock the realization came finally to D’Ormand that he must make the approach himself, force the issue of personal action.

  Abruptly, he felt astounded that he had half lain, half sat there while the precious minutes flowed by. He must have been completely dazed, and no wonder.

  But that was over. In a burst of determination, he leaped to his feet. And then, shaking, he hesitated. Was he actually intending to approach one of the crew of this ship of night, and ask questions by thought transference?

  It was the alienness that scared him. These people weren’t human. After three million years, their relation to him had no more meaning than that of the ape Of his own day that shared his ancestry.

  Three million years, 16 X1010 minutes; and every few seconds of that inconceivable span of time, somebody had been born, somebody else had died, life had gone on in its tremendous, terrifying fashion until here, after unthinkable eons, was the ultimate man. Here was evolution carried to such limits that space itself had been conquered by some unguessable and stupendous development of biological adaptation - stupendous but so simple, that in a single sleep period he, a stranger, had been miraculously transformed into the same state.

  D’Ormand’s thought paused there. He felt a sudden uneasiness, a sharp disturbing consciousness that he couldn’t possibly have the faintest idea how long he had been asleep. It could have been years, or centuries. Time did not e xist for a man who slept.

  It seemed abruptly more important than ever to discover what all this was about. His gaze came to rest on a man a hundred feet away, walking slowly. •

  He reached the moving figure; and then, at the last instant, he shrank back in dismay. Too late. His hand, thrusting forth, had touched the naked flesh.

  The man turned, and looked at D’Ormand. With a contorted gesture, D’Ormand let go of that unresisting arm. He cringed from eyes that blazed at him like points of flame stabbing through slitted holes.

  Curiously, it wasn’t the demoniac quality of the gaze itself that sent waves of fear surging along D’Ormand’s nerves. It was the soul that peered from those burning eyes - a strange, alien spirit that stared at him with an incomprehensible intensity.

  Then the man turned, and walked on.

  D’Ormand was trembling. But after a moment he knew that he couldn’t hold back. He didn’t let himself think about it, just walked forward and fell into-step beside the tall, enigmatic stroller. They walked on, past groups of men and women. And now that he was moving among them, D’Ormand noticed a fact that had previously escaped him. The women outnumbered the men three to one. At least.

  The wonder about that passed. He and his companion strolled on in that strangest of promenades. They skirted the edge of the ship. Forcing himself to be casual, D’Ormand stepped to one side, and stared down, into an abyss that stretched a billion light-years deep.

  He began to feel better. He ransacked his mind for some method of bridging the mental gulf between himself and the dark stranger. It must have been telepathy they had used to compel him to land his spaceship. If he concentrated on an idea now, he might receive an answer.

  The train of thought ended because at that point he noticed, not for the first time, that he was still clothed. But suddenly he thought of it from the angle: they had left him dressed. What was the psychology?

  He walked on, his mind blank, head bent, watching his trousered legs and, beside him, the naked legs of the thin man pumping along steadily.

  Just when the first impressions began to steal into him, D’Ormand was only vaguely aware, so gradually they came. There was a thought about the hour of battle drawing near; and that he must prove himself worthy before then, and so live forever on the ship. Otherwise, he would suffer the exile.

  It was like a quantum. One instant he was only dimly conscious of that alien blur of ideas. The next his mind made a frantic jump to the new comprehension of his position.

  The effect of the warning grew stronger. In abrupt shock of fear, D’Ormand headed for his spaceboat. He was tugging at the impassive entrance before the realization penetrated with finality that it offered no means of escape. Exhausted, he sank down on the deck. He became amazed at the extent of his fright. But there was no doubt of the cause. He had received information and a warning. A gelid, a bleak and steellike warning: he-must adjust to the ways of this ship before some fantastic battle was joined and, having proved worthy, live here forever.

  … Forever! It was that part of the idea that had for solid minutes staggered the fulcrums of his reason. The mood yielded to the dark drift of minutes. It seemed suddenly impossible that he had understood correctly the tiny tide of ideas that had been directed at him. A battle coming up. That was senseless. Be worthy, or suffer exile! Suffer what? D’Ormand wracked his brain, but the meaning came again: exile! It could mean death, he decided finally with a cold logic.

  He lay, his face twisted into a black frown. He felt violently angry at himself. What a stupid fool he had been, losing his nerve in the middle of a successful interview.

  It had been successful. Information had been asked for, and given. He should have held his ground, and kept his mind clenched, concentrated on a hundred different questions in turn: Who were they? Where was the ship going? What was the drive mechanism of the great platform liner? Why were there three women to one man?

  The thought trailed. In his intensity, he had jerked into a partial sitting position -r and there not more than five feet away was a woman.

  D’Ormand sank slowly back to the deck. He saw that the woman’s eyes were glowing at him unwinkingly. After a minute, uneasy, D’Ormand turned over on his back. He lay tense, staring up at the bright circle of the galaxy he had left so long ago now. The points of light that made up the glorious shining swirl seemed farther away than they had ever been.

  The life he had known, of long swift trips to far planets, of pleasurable weeks spent in remote parts of space, was unreal now. And even farther away in spirit than it was in time and space.

  With an effort, D’Ormand roused himself. This was no time for nostalgia. He had to get it into his head that he faced a crisis. The woman hadn’t come merely to look at him. Issues were being forced,.and he must meet them. With abrupt will, he rolled over and faced the woman again. For the first time, he, appraised her.

  She was rather pleasing to look at. Her face was youthful, shapely. Her hair was dark. It needed combing, but it wasn’t very thick, and the tousled effect was not unpretty. Her body -

  ‘D’Ormand sat up. Until that instant, he hadnf’t noticed the difference between her and the others. She was dressed. She had on a long, dark; form-fitting gown, made incongrous by the way her bare feet protruded from the voluminous skirt.

  Dressed! Now there could be no doubt. This was for him. But what was he expected to do?

  Desperate, D’Ormand stared at the woman. Her eyes were like dead jewels staring back at him. He felt a sudden wonder: what incredible thoughts were going on behind those shining windows of her mind? They were like closed doors beyond which was a mental picture of a world three million years older than his own.

  The idea was unsettling. Queer little twisting movements blurred along his nerves. He thought: woman was the nodal, man the anodal. All power grew out of their relationship, especially as the anodal could set up connections with three or more nodal.

  D’Ormand forced his mind to pause there. Had he thought that? Never.

  A jerky thrill made a circuit through him. For once more, the strange neutral method of communication of these people had stolen upon him unawares. And this time he knew that one or four women could form a relationship with a man. Which seemed to explain why there were so many women.

  His excitement began to drain. So what? It still didn’t ex-_ plain why this woman was here so near him. Unless this was some fantastic offer of marriage.

  D’Ormand studied the woman again. There came to him finally the first sardonicism he had known in months. Because after twelve years of evading the enticements of marriageable young women, he was caught at last. There was no such thing as not verifying that this woman had come over to marry him.

  The man’s threats had made preternaturally clear that he was working under a time limit. He crept over, took her in his arms, and kissed her. In crisis, he thought, action must be straightforward, unselfconscious, without guile.

  After a moment he forgot that. The woman’s lips were soft and passive. There was no resistance in them, nor, on the other hand, was there any awareness of the meaning of the kisses. Putting his lips to hers was like caressing a small child; the same immeasurable innocence was there.

  Her eyes, so near his own now, were lighted pools of uncomprehending non-resistance, of passivity so great that it was abnormal. Immensely clear it was that this young woman had never even heard of kisses. Her eyes glowed at him with an alien indifference - that ended.

  Amazingly, it ended. Those pools of light widened, grew visibly startled. And she drew away, a quick, lithe movement that carried her in some effortless fashion all the way to her feet. Instantly, she turned and walked off. She became a shadowy figure that did not look back.

  D’Ormand stared after her uneasily. There was a part of him that wanted to take ironic satisfaction out of the rout he had inflicted. But the conviction that the defeat was his grew with each passing second. It was he who was working against time. And his first attempt to adjust to the life of the dark ship was a failure.

  Uneasiness faded, but did not go away entirely. And D’Ormand made no effort to push it further. It was well to remember that he had had a warning. A warning that either meant something or didn’t. Folly to assume that it didn’t.

 

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